TooSweet!!!

[New Kid]

Sweetened a Blush Zinfandel and went WAAAAYYYY over board! It is like cough syrup. Does it go down the drain or do I have options? Can I referment? What should I do!

 

[Waldo]

Make another batch , fermented to dry and then blend them

 

[grapeman]

Like Waldo says, blending is probably your best option. If you used the proper sorbate before sweetening, it will not re-ferment to get the excess sugar out, so blending is the main option.

 

[Wade E]

Blending is really the only option as said above, this is why we stress to sweeten in smaller amounts like 1 bottles worth to figure out the exact amount needed and then multiply this by the amount of wine left to be sweetened as its very easy to go overboard.

 

[New Kid]

Thanks guys. I had thought of that among a couple of other options. SO WILL LEAVE THIS BATCH IN BULK,ORDER ANOTHER KIT AND GET ON IT. Next time around, I will use more caution at the sweeting stage! Also, an upcoming batch of Lambrusco that I need to sweeten will be approached with much more caution and a lot of tasting between cups of 2:1 syrup. It is a 5 gallonn batch and I think I will go 1/2 cup syrup at a time. I used to drink it a lot in my 20's when I WAS IN Germany and remember that it was on the sweet side and went very well with pizza! But I will be very cautious with my processes. Again, I am so very happy that I have this forum resource for support. Thanks again.

 

[Wade E]

The best way to do it is to know what volume you are dealing with(say 6 gallon =30 bottles). Pull out 1 bottles worth and record how much syrup it took to get it to the point where you like it then multiply that amount of syrup by the 29 bottles you still need to sweeten and add that to the carboy you need to sweeten and then add whats left that you had alraedy sweeten back in.

 

[grapeman]

Also after you get the new kit fermented to dry and stabilized with the k-meta snd sorbate, pull out a bottle of wine from the sweet batch. Then atake a bottle from the dry kit. Using samll amounts of measured wine mix the two together - say 1/4 cup of dry with 1/4 cup of sweet. When youfind the mixture you like- (for ease of example you like half and half) mix the whole batch that way. Good luck and welcome to the world of mixing- It is fun!

 

[New Kid]

All very good advice. No one had steered me wrong yet.

 

[unaFORDable]

Make another batch , fermented to dry and then blend them

Another thing you can do, if you find you still have some of it left over after using it to backsweeten another batch, is give some away to your friends that like the really sweet wine!!! But if I had that stuff, I would use it to cook with!!! Can't you just taste it after being reduced with pork chops and baby bella mushrooms

 

[hannabarn]

When I backsweeten a 6 gallon batch, I syphon of 1 gallon and carefully backsweeten to taste and multiply the amount of simple syrup by 5 and add that much to the carboy and then add the sweetened gallon back to the carboy.

 

[Mark]

I didn't trust my pallete the first time I backsweetened a Riesling and didn't want to over- or under-sweeten it, so I took an SG reading of a commercial Riesling we like. After slowly backsweetening 1 bottle and getting it to whereweliked, I checked its SG and compared the two. This gave me a bit of extra confidence that I hadn't gone too far either way.